LEAD_NOT_FOLLOW

Our son was born April 27th and his first ride was in a Jeep, and in "mommy's" Jeep. Just wait till he's old enough to brag at school that his mom drives a sweet Jeep. :D Pic on the way home in Mom's Jeep.

We were going to attend the GLXJ winterfest. I REALLY wanted to take my MJ but they were calling for bad weather that weekend and I didn't feel comfortable towing if the roads were going to be bad. So I ended up taking the wife's XJ. She didn't attend as she's preggy now and we thought it wasn't the best idea for her to be wheeling. So knows how I wheel, so I had strict guidelines to follow if I was going to be wheeling her rig. Well what can I say, 5 mins into the day I break threw some ice, burry her rig, and everyone takes a million pics and video so they can get me in trouble. Great friends I have. :cheers: Here's the pic that got me "busted". It was the first time out with the 33's and I was very happy with the way it performed. I had bump stopped and trimmed a little in the front and we had no rubbing issues at all. After spending several days detailing her Jeep since I got it kinda dirty it was back in her hands and back to daily driver duties.

I had a good offer on my 31" BFG MT's, so we sold them to a fellow GLXJ member. So we ran the old Gamblers again. Well Chico wanted those so we sold them to him. This left us with a set of 31" AT's on factory rims. I painted the rims black and they severed their purpose well. We got married Dec. 15th and what would ya know.. the middle of a blizzard. We had planned on taking the BMW but with 24" of snow that wasn't going to happen. My XJ was torn apart and she wasn't excited about crawling up into my XJ in her wedding dress. So here are a few pics of the XJ showing it's stuff at our wedding. Not sure how they thought we were going to drive off "plugged in". Guess I can't leave out a pic of my beautiful wife and 6yr old daughter. She really wanted a roof rack, so for Christmas I ordered her a Surco roof rack from Motion Offroad. The 31's we were running were on stock rims and I wasn't crazy about how it felt while driving it. It felt very "tipsy" even on the road and the overall track was way to narrow. She had been driving it daily back and forth to work (about 150 miles round trip) and I wasn't comfortable with the current setup. She really wanted a set of 33" Maxxis Bighorns as I run them in the 35" flavor on my XJ and we love them. So for her birthday I ordered up a set of 33x12.5x15 Maxxis Bighorns and a set of Black Crager Soft 8'as from Motion Offroad. And here is an installed pic. Who says you can't fit 33's with 3.5" lift with no trimming?

I wasn't going to give up to have my wife back in another Jeep. I had posted on a few forums that I was looking for a mid '90s XJ that was basically stock or very lightly modded. I think a good 6 months passed by and we hadn't found one that we liked yet. In the meantime we were dumping money into my XJ instead and just enjoying that. We had a GLXJ member offer us a good price for the lift off the gray XJ so we sold that and figured we'd eventually find something we liked. A local club member decided that he wanted to part with his XJ as he was really wanting a Wrangler. I talked a few times to him about his cherry '93 XJ and he always wanted a lot for it. Several months went by and he never sold it. Well he found a Wrangler that he "had to have" and I guess bought it without selling his XJ. So I get a message from him saying, "you still interested in my XJ, I need to sell it fast as I just bought a Wrangler". GREAT! I've got him where I want him now. He told me a price, I offered him $1000 less than what he wanted and a week later I now owned a cherry white '93 XJ. So I go home one day after work and tell the wife I bought her another XJ and that I needed her last weeks paycheck to pay for it. :brows: She wasn't happy but quickly got over it. So we went and picked it up and she was happy. Of course it can't stay stock. :roll: We've done quite a bit to it in the last year. Here it is with a Rubicon Express 3.5" superflex lift with my old 31" BFG MT's on Eagle Alloys. Look Ma! it's twins! Sitting next to my XJ on 35's. She's wheeled it a few times and it did very well with the setup we were running. Nothing like having your wife show up some guys on the rocks. :D Here are few wheeling pics with the 31's. We also added a new front bumper and a few other misc. suspension things. Also added a CB for the trails and put in a quality sound system.

Let me start this out by stating this is a story on how we got to her current XJ. She's had several the last few years... After my wife went wheeling with me a few times I started to hear "I think I want a Jeep". She enjoys riding shotgun but I knew deep down she wanted her own Jeep to wheel. It started with a '90 XJ. Lifted 4" with a set of 31's on American Racing Gamblers. It was from Cali and not a spec of rust on it. Ran awsome, rode awsome and was the perfect Jeep for her to drive in the winter and wheel all summer. She loved this Jeep. Drove it all the time and loved wheeling it with me. Unfortunately she met some black ice and a telephone pole won the battle. So we cut our losses, parted a lot of the Jeep out and sold the running "chassis" to a buddy who's made a buggy out of it. She she still lives... About a month without a Jeep I heard "I miss my XJ, I wish I had another one". So the hunt started again... We found a '96 XJ country that was mint. Leather interior, stock, grandma driven, and cheap. Plans were to put the lift and tires off of her gray XJ onto the new XJ. We bought it being told that it had a bad radiator and knowing the issues with the plastic endcaps I thought it was an easy fix. Of course the guy didn't have the rad. in it so I was unable to start it etc. Bought a new CSF rad, fired it up and we had a gush of coolant coming out the side of the block. It was coming out by the water pump and for all I knew it was a bad waterpump. I unfortunately was working 70+ hours a week at the time and didn't really have the time or place to work on it. So we decided to part with this XJ and sold it to a local guy who had it running in a few weeks. So she was pritty discouraged by now and thought she wasn't going to get another XJ. We had looked a few but nothing fit the requirements we were wanting, and if they did they were out of our pre-set price range.

I'd start with a set of adjustable lowers if your going to buy just 1 set. Lowers are far more important than the uppers are. If you want to buy uppers and lowers than by all means go for it.

If your going to use drop brackets with your factory arms than I have to ask why? Have you looked at the factory arms? Hit a pot-hole and you risk bending one of them. Invest in quality replacement arms before you buy drop brackets. With new arms they are stronger. If you go with adjustable's you'll be able to center your axle in your wheel well, as well as adjust your pinion angle a bit. Fixed length arms won't do that (they may center your axle if they are for the correct lift height). Also a nice thing about adjustable arms is that say you started out at 3" and than a year later wanted to go to 4.5". You can simply adjust them to fit your lift height and not have to buy parts a 2nd time.

I run both 4" BS and 3.75" BS on a 8" wide rim with 12.5" wide tires. Neither set gives me any issues.

Trying to convince the wife she needs beadlocks on her XJ. So I put a set on it to try to show her what it would look like. What set do you guys like better?

Backspace is the distance from the mounting surface to the inside lip of the wheel. The lower the number, the further out it sticks. Just remember that wheel width is DIRECTLY related to backspace. For instance a 8" wide rim with 4" BS and a 10" wide rim with 4" BS will NOT stick out the same amount. Also, if your going to run 33x12.5 I'd really consider just running a 8" wide rim. A 10" wide rim will make it more prone to loosing your bead.

A MJ has a much longer wheelbase and driveshaft than the XJ does. TC drops really are not needed on the MJ's. Personally I wouldn't use one as it puts more stress on the mounts. I doubt you'll even notice a difference with one on the MJ's.

The Super kit is basicly a c-clip eliminator setup that includes new shafts correct? I think that you have to bolt something on the end of the axle tubes also correct? Do you think that it now putting stress in a different area makes the shaft more prone to breakage at the end where yours broke?

I don't think "hard wheeling" has anything to do with any of it. Quality parts on a street driven daily driver are just as important as a "hardcore" wheeling rig is. I won't even say anything about the quality of the parts of the RRO kit; I'm simply talking about how the kit is put together and how they advertise it. For example... Front coils, why use a 3" coil with a 2" spacer? Why not just use a 5" coil to begin with? No longer control arms? How can you call the kit "the best kit on the planet" and not include one of the most vital parts in lifting a Jeep? Rear SOA, you will most likely net at least 6" of lift in the rear going that route. Typically more depending on if it's a 4wd or 2wd and the condition of your springs. Hard to compare SOA with new leaf packs. What about bumpstops? What about swaybar disco's? So factor the price of $470 plus lets say $200 for a cheap set of control arms, another $100 for cheap swaybar disco's, and another $30 for bumpstops. Now your $470 kit just became a $800 kit. I'd gladly pay $300 more for a kit that has new rear leaf packs and uses coils without spacers upfront. I just think that the RRO kit like Pete said is just a "half kit" and many additional things are needed. Why aren't they included? Maybe RRO really thinks that they are not needed and just wants to offer something cheap to get you to a certain height. Maybe they are just looking to make a few bucks. I don't know why... but unfortunately (in my opinion and I think others will agree) they leave some very important parts out in doing a lift. End result is the buyer is left hanging with what they think is a good deal only to find down the road they need to spend more money even though they bought the "best MJ kit on the planet"; as RRO says. To each thier own, but I think you said it best when you said "I think you get what you pay for, and I'm not for doing things more than once".

I'd say a good 75% of what RRO has to say is BS. They don't even use 5" coils, they use a 3" coil with a coil spacer. I won't even go into the other stuff thats "half-a$$ed" with that kit. Go with something quality; http://motionoffroad.com/catalog/index. ... Path=12_57

I run a header on my 4.0L. Here is a video.. http://www.jeeptv.com/video/6423 Though I have a bit more "omph" as well with the rest of the mods. 8)

The biggest problem is you need to 4 link the rear to run coils. Requires the removal of the gas tank if you do the typical setup. Rumor has it though that Motion is working on a bolt-on rear coil setup for the MJ's. :chillin:

It was developed in 1953 by Norm Larsen (then working for the Rocket Chemical Company), to drive away water and prevent corrosion. WD-40 stands for Water Displacement, 40th formula. Larsen was attempting to concoct a formula to prevent corrosion, by displacing the standing water that promotes it. In the process, he arrived at a successful formula on his 40th attempt. WD-40 was first used by Convair to protect the outer skin of the Atlas missile from rust and corrosion. The product first became commercially available on store shelves in San Diego in 1958. WD-40's main ingredients, according to U.S. Material Safety Data Sheet information, are: * 50%: Stoddard solvent (i.e., mineral spirits -- somewhat similar to kerosene) * 25%: Liquefied petroleum gas (presumably as a propellant; carbon dioxide is now used instead to reduce WD-40's considerable flammability) * 15+%: Mineral oil (light lubricating oil) * 10-%: Inert ingredients

Wade, What about the XJ Casablanca front?

Dunno.... I'd drive it to get grocery's, probably would even wheel it as well... :D

It will pry out (to the right). The "lip" will move away from the black part. Put a screwdriver between the black part and the shiny part and pry a little bit. It will only move about a 1/4" and than lift up on the wiper assembly.

On the wiper arm itself there is a little tab (see green arrow) that you pry out with the straight screwdriver. Once the tab is out you can lift up on the wiper arms and they should come off. They may be a bit difficult to get off, so take your time and be careful if you try to pry on them.

As far as the heater goes there where 3 different type setups. 1) Renix Era w/vacuum controlled valve. 2) 90-96(ish) w/vacuum controlled valve. 3) 97+ with no valve. If you are doing the conversion to an open system you will need to do either #2 or #3 above. The Renix valve won't work properly with the new open system. When I did the conversion I opted for #2 above. Here is a photo of the 90-96 valve. It can be purchased at the dealer for cheap and it's part number is 56005900. Also just for reference here is a photo of the Renix hoses vs. the 90-96 hoses. I just bought the new hoses, but I think with some creativity you could make the Renix hoses work with the new valve.

It's probably your NSS (neutral safety switch). The NSS is what controls the lights. If your careful you can clean them. http://jeepin.com/features/nss/index.asp

It's the blue hose that operates the the light on the dash. Trace it from the TC to it's source and check for cracks etc. If the hose checks out OK than it's likely it's the switch as BLHTAZ has mentioned.

Call me crazy but I thought I read he bought the new fenders as well. I could of sworn I saw him post pics of them...